Democratic staffers in Colorado recently came to believe they were the subject of an O’Keefe operation after campaign workers became suspicious about would-be volunteers who had asked about filling out and submitting mail-in ballots for others. Recently, the 30-year-old O’Keefe has targeted the Senate campaigns of Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor and Kentucky Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes by filming undercover videos of staffers or the candidate.

Last Tuesday, a man who appeared to be in his 20s showed up at a Democratic field office in Boulder wanting to volunteer to help elect Udall and Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), according to a Democratic staffer who met with him and asked not to be identified. The man introduced himself as “Nick Davis,” and he said he was a University of Colorado-Boulder student and LGBT activist involved with a student group called Rocky Mountain Vote Pride. Davis mentioned polls showing the race between Udall and Gardner was tight, and he asked the staffer if he should fill out and mail in ballots for other college students who had moved away but still received mail on campus. The Democratic staffer says he told Davis that doing this would be voter fraud and that he should not do it.

On Friday, Udall campaigned with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on the University of Colorado-Boulder campus. After the event, a woman calling herself “Bonnie” approached a different staffer and, according to this staffer’s boss, asked whether she could fill out and submit blank ballots found in a garbage can. The staffer, according to her boss, said that she told her no.

That same day, the guy identifying himself as “Nick Davis” returned to the Democratic office in Boulder. He was accompanied by a man wearing heavy makeup and a mustache, according to the Democratic staffer who had met Davis three days earlier. Davis introduced his friend as a “civics professor” at the University of Colorado-Boulder and the faculty adviser to Rocky Mountain Vote Pride. Davis and the professor, who said his name was “John Miller,” picked up Udall campaign literature and canvassing information.

On Monday, O’Keefe tweeted a photo of himself with a mustache and said he’d recently posed as a “45yo” for one of his “election investigations.”

You know how Republicans are always raving about “vote fraud,” even though it essentially does not exist? Well, in Mississippi’s runoff election, Tea Party loons are taking this bogus concern to the next level, vowing to send in their own “election monitors” to make sure nobody tries to commit this nonexistent crime — but Mississippi officials are not amused.

The Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office and the Mississippi Attorney General’s office said observers from both offices will be present in Mississippi counties on election day Tuesday.

“Observers from both the Secretary of State’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office will be in Mississippi counties on Election Day,” the offices said Monday in a joint statement providing guidance on election day.

The statement also said that “there is no authority in state law for a PAC or other outside group to place ‘election observers’ in Mississippi polling places.”

Voter fraud may not exist, but voter intimidation definitely does — and that’s the true purpose of this moronic Tea Party plan. They’re really not fooling anyone but themselves.

ObserverArtre: #83 Charles Johnson What a family. They must have been real big on building their kids self confidence and worth to the point of creating big-head-ego-monsters. Can you imagine a party at the Martin house?

A new video by conservative activist James O’Keefe shows Wisconsin’s Republican Senate president vowing to illegally create his own super PAC in violation of state law.

In the undercover video recorded in a bar, state Senate President Mike Ellis tells O’Keefe and a companion: “I am putting together my own super PAC. My brother Dave is going to be in charge of it. We’re going to have $500,000. I don’t need to kiss anybody’s ass.” He then proceeds to list the funders of the super PAC, along with how much he expects each to contribute. Campaign law bars candidates from coordinating with such independent groups.

In the video, Ellis also said his fundraiser, Judi Rhodes Engels, would help run the super PAC, but she later told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that no such request was ever made. She quit his campaign hours after the video of his comments was posted online.

thatthatisisre: #31 Pie-onist Overlord I don't hear too many people mentioning this, but the Koch brothers' father was one of the founding members of the John Birch Society. The Republican Party turned away from the Birchers in the 60s and ...

The chairman of Maine’s Republican Party, Charlie Webster, is investigating a very suspicious case of voting while black.

Webster made the claim in a wide-ranging, post-election interview this week with Don Carrigan of WCSH-TV.

“In some parts of rural Maine, there were dozens, dozens of black people who came in and voted on Election Day,” he said. “Everybody has a right to vote, but nobody in (these) towns knows anyone who’s black. How did that happen? I don’t know. We’re going to find out.”

When Carrigan pressed Webster on where it happened, Webster provided no specifics or proof of his claims, but said the party would investigate further.

Mr. Webster is, of course, totally outraged at suggestions that his suspicions may have racial motivations.

When asked about the issue in an interview Wednesday with the Portland Press Herald, Webster again refused to provide specifics.

He said his point is not that the new voters were black, but that they were not recognized by town officials.

“I’m not talking about 15 or 20. I’m talking hundreds,” he said Wednesday. “I’m not politically correct and maybe I shouldn’t have said these voters were black, but anyone who suggests I have a bias toward any race or group, frankly, that’s sleazy.”

WASHINGTON - The Republican National Committee has abruptly cut ties to a consulting firm hired for get-out-the-vote efforts in seven presidential election swing states after Florida prosecutors launched an investigation into possible fraud in voter registration forms.

Working through state parties, the RNC has sent more than $3.1 million this year to Strategic Allied Consulting, a company formed in June by Nathan Sproul, an Arizona voting consultant. Sproul has operated other firms that have been accused in past elections of improprieties designed to help Republican candidates, including dumping registration forms filled out by Democrats, but none of those allegations led to any criminal charges.

Sean Spicer, spokesman for the RNC, said the party, has “zero tolerance” for voter fraud and cut ties to the firm on Wednesday, urging state parties to do the same. The forms in question in Florida were all submitted by one worker and were not the result of an effort to suppress votes, he said.

The Associated Press reviewed temporary primary ballots in Indiana and Georgia, two states that recently adopted stringent Voter ID laws at the urging of Republicans, and discovered that the laws are doing exactly what the GOP wants — disenfranchising the elderly, poor, and minorities, and potentially tilting the election to the right.

As more states put in place strict voter ID rules, an AP review of temporary ballots from Indiana and Georgia, which first adopted the most stringent standards, found that more than 1,200 such votes were tossed during the 2008 general election.

During sparsely attended primaries this year in Georgia, Indiana and Tennessee, the states implementing the toughest laws, hundreds more ballots were blocked.

The numbers suggest that the legitimate votes rejected by the laws are far more numerous than are the cases of fraud that advocates of the rules say they are trying to prevent. Thousands more votes could be in jeopardy for this November, when more states with larger populations are looking to have similar rules in place.

More than two dozen states have some form of ID requirement, and 11 of those passed new rules over the past two years largely at the urging of Republicans who say they want to prevent fraud.

There’s some fraud going on here, that’s for sure — the Republican Party’s fraudulent claims that Voter ID laws are needed for any other reason than to give Republicans an advantage in the presidential election, by preventing people who normally lean Democratic from voting.

Supporters of the laws cite anecdotal cases of fraud as a reason that states need to do more to secure elections, but fraud appears to be rare. As part of its effort to build support for voter ID laws, the Republican National Lawyers Association last year published a report that identified some 400 election fraud prosecutions over a decade across the entire country. That’s not even one per state per year.

ID laws would not have prevented many of those cases because they involved vote-buying schemes in local elections or people who falsified voter registrations.

Election administrators and academics who monitor the issue said in-person fraud is rare because someone would have to impersonate a registered voter and risk arrest. A 2008 Supreme Court case drew detailed briefs from the federal government, 10 states and other groups that identified only nine potential impersonation cases over the span of several years, according to a tally by the Brennan Center at New York University.

In the amoral universe of James O’Keefe and his political hack friends like Andrew Breitbart, it never matters how many innocent people are smeared or hurt on the way to one of their “scoops.”

But this story is heartbreaking, as the grieving widow of a recently deceased US Navy veteran was appalled to learn that her husband’s name had been used in O’Keefe’s cynical right wing scheme to fraudulently obtain ballots in New Hampshire: N.H. widow shocked by ploy at polls.

A grieving New Hampshire widow said she was stunned to learn her beloved husband’s identity was used for a political gotcha — just 10 days after his death.

“That’s awful,” Rachel Groux said. “Why should they use his name? They shouldn’t use anybody’s name — alive or deceased.”

Activist filmmaker James O’Keefe secretly recorded video showing his operative using Roger Groux’s name and address to obtain a Republican ballot at Manchester polls Tuesday. The U.S. Navy veteran died Dec. 31 at an assisted living home. His family held funeral services Monday, his widow said.

“Oh my God, I know what he would say, ‘Call the cops, call the police,’ ” Rachel Groux said.

Of course, the important objective is to give the Republican Party ammunition to help them pass voter ID laws, so why should James O’Keefe or Andrew Breitbart care about the feelings of a veteran’s grieving widow? She’s just collateral damage to them.

Romantic HereticLike that good conservative Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili said, "You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs." / Nice to know that O'Keefe, Breitbart at al. share such a fine philosophy with that great statesman.

James O’Keefe and his idiot squad (aka “Project Veritas”), who committed voter fraud in New Hampshire in order to help Republicans promote their “voter ID” laws across the nation, are being investigated by the US Attorney’s Office and the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office, and New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch is calling for them to be prosecuted “to the fullest extent of the law.”

CONCORD, N.H. — State and federal investigators are looking into a hidden camera video of people getting ballots to vote in the New Hampshire primary after giving poll workers the names of people who recently died.

The online video is from Project Veritas, an organization founded by conservative activist James O’Keefe. The group said it went into 14 state polling locations Tuesday with hidden cameras and names of people who died so recently that their names were still on the registered voter lists.

[…]

The group insisted it didn’t break any laws and didn’t claim to be another person when members gave the names of deceased people to poll workers. Gov. John Lynch said the group’s actions should be investigated.

“I think it is outrageous that we have out-of-staters coming into New Hampshire, coming into our polling places and misrepresenting themselves to the election officials, and I hope that they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, if in fact they’re found guilty of some criminal act,” he said.

[…]

The U.S. Attorney’s Office and New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office are investigating the video.

In his latest moronic, almost certainly illegal right wing stunt, fraudster James O’Keefe scoured obituary listings for the names of recently deceased New Hampshire residents, then sent his operatives to polling stations where they tried to obtain ballots for those dead voters.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — A mystery man trying to vote in the New Hampshire primary using a dead man’s name got caught by an eagle-eyed voting supervisor in Manchester, then disappeared before police could corral him.

“We take a lot of pride in this primary,” Gloria Pilotte, the Ward 9 supervisor who stopped the voter fraud, told the Herald. “I’m very confident about the way we do this in New Hampshire.”

The unknown man, dressed in a suit and tie, did not say why he was trying to vote as the recently deceased person and would not identify any group he was representing.

“He said ‘You’ll soon find out,’ ” Pilotte tells the Herald.

But in the closed loop of the wingnut echo chamber, the fact that no actual voter fraud was demonstrated, and that no one has ever even been accused of a scheme like O’Keefe’s, will be completely irrelevant. This is all they need to start screaming that left wing “voter fraud” is now a proven fact.

UPDATE at 1/11/12 1:01:23 pm

LGF author Lawhawk points out the relevant federal statute; note that to commit a crime, it isn’t necessary to actually cast a vote. The simple act of procuring the ballots under false pretenses is clearly illegal:

A person, including an election official, who in any election for Federal office- knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds, or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by—

(A) the procurement or submission of voter registration applications that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held; or
(B) the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held,

shall be fined in accordance with title 18 (which fines shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury, miscellaneous receipts (pursuant to section 3302 of title 31), notwithstanding any other law), or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

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